


Deal with the Devil

by ectobiological



Category: Welcome to Hell - All Media Types
Genre: Murder, Oneshot, Possession, Suicide mention, insanity (kind of lmao)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-10
Updated: 2015-02-10
Packaged: 2018-03-11 12:29:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3327176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ectobiological/pseuds/ectobiological
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>jonathan makes a confession, mephistopheles makes a deal, and sock makes one of the worst decisions of his death</p>
            </blockquote>





	Deal with the Devil

**Author's Note:**

> i know this is messed up and some of the syntax is less than satisfactory but lets pretend that's not there
> 
> this was meant to be based off the song "love me again" by john newman, and it was meant to be cute. that idea failed.

_“He was destined to be an angel - a warrior in training to be of help to Providence. A class held in high regard, really._  
 _“We couldn’t let him get there._  
 _“Suicide and murder - two surefire ways to end up in hell.”  
_  
 _“Sock, don’t do it. Sock, please.  
_        _“Sock! Please! No!”_  
  
      Mephistopheles had explained why Sock had to do what he was ordered to only after he had actually done it. Jonathan - he wasn’t going to heaven any more. Sock - he wasn’t getting fired. But he also wasn’t getting forgiven any time soon.  
      The King of Hell was very good at watching people without them noticing - both spirits and humans alike. He’d been doing it for millennia, and had henceforth been offered plenty of opportunity to practice. Let alone the fact that, as a deity, he could be relatively omnipresent and omniscient whenever he so chose. So it was no surprise that he was watching when Jonathan had said something quite unexpected.  
  
 _“Sock, can I tell you a secret? It’s kind of really stupid, but you’ve got to promise to tell no one at all.”_  
 _“Sure,” Sock responded brightly. Trusting him with secrets was a good sign. Jonathan was inching closer and closer to accepting Sock as a really good friend, exactly as Sock had always wanted. Well, wanted along with Jonathan’s eventual suicide._  
 _“I think…. Okay, this is so ridiculous, but I think I love you.”_  
  
      And it was no shock that he knew what Sock had thought about what Jonathan had said.  
  
      Alright, keep it together,  _Sock thought as he paced up and down a thick tree branch, high above the ground and just a block west of Jonathan’s house._ So he loves you. Cool! This will be super helpful as an excuse to get him to kick the bucket.  _Sock stopped and buried his face in his hands._ But I don’t even want him to anymore. God, what’s wrong with me? I suck at my job!  _Whipping his hands from his face, Sock went back to furiously pacing. He had been in Jonathan’s room only moments ago, but had escaped through the wall and flew here as refuge. It wasn’t the most dignified response, but it was one that kept him from saying anything stupid. He had wanted Jonathan as a friend, but he’d never expected this. And worse, he’d never expected to love him back._  
  
      So Mephistopheles knew that Jonathan had fallen for a demon, and that Sock had no intention of killing Jonathan because of his own reciprocation. Honestly, the whole situation wasn’t anything new. But it was a reason for concern - mostly because it put a dent in Mephistopheles’ plan.  
  
      As such, Mephistopheles had made Sock an offer. He would overlook Sock’s complete incompetence in regards to his assignment (which meant Sock wouldn’t be fired and forced to suffer for the rest of eternity after Hell had finished being renovated), allow him  _not_  to kill Jonathan, and even gift him with a new ability, so long as he did one thing: Sock had to use his ability to get Jonathan to kill someone. But, of course, it couldn’t be just anyone. For Mephistopheles’ own personal gratification over the irony of the situation, he told Sock that Jonathan had to kill his own parents.  
      Now, Sock remembered the regret he had felt killing his parents. But the ability he was being given… it could potentially mean Jonathan wouldn’t remember any of it. He may not even find out it ever happened, if Sock convinced him to move away immediately. To not be fired and to be permitted to let Jonathan live at the price of two simple deaths - to Sock it seemed like perhaps the most flawless deal Mephistopheles could have offered, despite the parent aspect.  _Oh well,_ Sock had thought as he shook Mephistopheles’ hand to officially seal the deal in Hell etiquette. T _hey’re parents. They’re old. They’re going out soon anyway._  
  
      So Sock had made the deal and he had carried it out. One night at precisely 4AM Jonathan Combs “awoke” on his front lawn after an unfortunate “sleepwalk”, only to wander inside and discover his parents had been brutally murdered in their bedroom only an hour ago. He called the police, reporting finding the dead bodies of his parents and having been cut up a bit himself. They arrived after half an hour, at which time Jonathan had almost passed out twice due to blood-loss related nausea. Two officers seized Jonathan for questioning, a process which took over two days.  
      While there wasn’t much agreement among investigators on the case, what was decided was this: whoever had killed Mr. and Mrs. Combs had a strength higher than that of Jonathan, but had used a saw from his father’s shed that was padlocked and uncut, meaning Jonathan and his father’s friends or particular workmates were the only ones who could have possibly accessed it. Considering the only affiliates of Mr. Combs who were close enough to him to have been told the code were out of the country, Jonathan was the only suspect left. The fact that he had called the police himself and had been injured so severely raised questions about the mental stability of Jonathan at the time, however, which led to further investigation that concluded Jonathan had in fact been mostly unconscious at the time of the murder, but had conducted it nonetheless in a state that prevented him from realising exactly what he was doing. Jonathan was kept in a ward for the criminally insane as the case was further debated upon in court.  
  
      Jonathan was dubbed too traumatised to speak, which was proved by his complete silence after the incident. For this reason he was excused from further interrogation and questioning by lawyers, leaving them to their own devices. Psychologists reasoned his shock was due to the sudden realisation that he must have been the murderer, but only Jonathan, Sock and Mephistopheles knew the truth.  
  
      The ability Sock had been granted was the choice to possess Jonathan whenever he so pleased. When agreeing to the deal, Sock had believed this possession meant Jonathan would be unaware of what was going on while he was out of control of his body. However, only when it was too late did Sock realise how wrong he was. The entire time, Sock could hear a voice inside his head, one he presumed had to be just another addition to the homicidal whispering he already experienced. Unlike his usual thought processes, this voice began to yell and grow louder as Sock got closer and closer to ending Jonathan’s parent’s lives at his own hands.   
      Once his father was dead, the noise became so loud and clear he had no doubt it was Jonathan’s voice. Which only meant he had to have been in there, somewhere, consciously seeing what he was doing without being able to stop it.  
  
 _“Sock, please!” Jonathan’s voice cried over Sock’s own thoughts. “Please, please stop!”_  
 _“I can’t,” Sock thought to himself - no, to Jonathan - as he flicked blood off the weapon and followed Jonathan’s mother as she crawled backwards to the corner of the room. “I’m sorry.”_  
 _“Jonathan, no!” Jonathan’s mother cried, quivering in the corner like a leaf shaking in the wind. “What’s gotten over you? Jonathan, this isn’t like you! Jonathan, please! I love you!”_  
 _“Sock!” Jonathan yelled in his own mind, voice breaking like he was sobbing as Sock raised the bat he had taken from Jonathan’s room, but would later dispose of in order to frame a saw as the murder weapon - something which would incriminate Jonathan much less. It was only as he bought it down that he felt the wet tears on his face, the only physical sign of the real Jonathan inhabiting his own body._  
  
      Sock had left Jonathan on the lawn and gone to alert Mephistopheles of his success as the aftereffects of his spiritual hijacking subsided in Jonathan’s body, and he eventually regained consciousness. It was then that Mephistopheles explained why Jonathan had to go to Hell rather than Heaven, which was, in essence, for his own personal gain. If Jonathan had been allowed to go where he would have gone had he not killed someone (or himself), he would have become an angel - specifically one trained to stand by Providence’s side and undertake her personal requests, as well as generally guarding the Queen of Heaven. It was a position that many angels could only dream of possessing, and Jonathan was the lucky human chosen once every century to fill it.  
      Mephistopheles permitted Sock to keep his possession powers, and Sock left Hell immediately to find Jonathan and try to explain to him what a mistake he’d made. He’d condemned Jonathan in place of himself, something Sock hadn’t even thought about in his determination not to be fired, and not to have Jonathan die prematurely. Jonathan could have been an angel of incredible power. Now he was just destined to alphabetise for the rest of eternity.  
  
    _“Jonathan, I’m so sorry,” Sock said, not for the first time, to the boy sitting against the furthest wall of his cell with his head bowed. Jonathan remained in his silence. “Jonathan, please. I love you.”_  
 _Jonathan flinched, but didn’t respond._  
 _“What’d you say, that one time?” Sock asked him, to which Jonathan seemed to move his lips, but failed to let sound escape. “You told me you lov-“_  
 _“I said get out,” Jonathan’s cold, husky voice interrupted from his side of the room._  
 _“What?”_  
 _“I said get out!” Jonathan’s voice raised and he lifted his head sharply, revealing his hollow face and the even darker bags under his eyes. “Get out! Don’t you ever speak to me again! You hear me? Get. Out!”_  
 _Sock took a couple steps back, and pressed himself against the door. He gazed incredulously onwards at Jonathan, who remained screaming with his eyes at Sock even as he himself stayed silent._  
 _“You leave me alone right now,” Jonathan told him slowly, his voice low and threatening, something Sock had never heard him like before, “and you never,_  ever _come back.”_  
  
      And that was the first and last thing Jonathan ever said after the death of his parents.  
  
      Sock returned to Hell and was assigned another human to haunt, which he did without question. This time there was no fooling about. No friendships, no jokes, no trying to make it easy on them. Sock just absently, slowly but surely drove them to madness and eventual death. Afterwards, he returned to Hell for another assignment. And another. And another. And another. All of which he carried out emotionlessly and successfully, without fault or fail. It wasn’t so hard to bring someone to madness any more now that he had seen it, and secretly felt himself slipping closer to it an inch every day.  
  
      Sometimes he would visit Jonathan, but neither of them ever spoke. Sock would just sit there beside him, sometimes for minutes and sometimes for hours, before getting up and walking away. After a while the feeling of hate waned from Jonathan, but never enough, and never quickly. After being convicted guilty of murder he had gone into his cell almost perfectly sane, but he had a feeling if and when he ever left, he would not leave it that way.  
       _Oh well,_  Jonathan thought to himself.  _They were parents. They were old. They were going out soon anyway._


End file.
